Search

Virtually everybody would agree that life satisfaction is of immense importance in everyday life. Thus, it is not surprising that a considerable amount of research using many different methodological approaches has investigated what the best predictors of life satisfaction are. In the present study, we have focused on several key potential influences on life satisfaction including bottom-up and top-down models, cross-cultural effects, and demographic variables. In four independent (large scale) surveys with sample sizes ranging from N = 488 to 40,297, we examined the associations between life satisfaction and various related variables. Our findings demonstrate that prediction of overall life satisfaction works best when including information about specific life satisfaction variables. From this perspective, satisfaction with leisure showed the highest impact on overall life satisfaction in our European samples. Personality was also robustly associated with life satisfaction, but only when life satisfaction variables were not included in the regression model. These findings could be replicated in all four independent samples, but it was also demonstrated that the relevance of life satisfaction variables changed under the influence of cross-cultural effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychologists and psychiatrists commonly rely on self-reports or interviews to diagnose or treat behavioral addictions. The present study introduces a novel source of data: recordings of the actual problem behavior under investigation. A total of N = 58 participants were asked to fill in a questionnaire measuring problematic mobile phone behavior featuring several questions on weekly phone usage. After filling in the questionnaire, all participants received an application to be installed on their smartphones, which recorded their phone usage for five weeks. The analyses revealed that weekly phone usage in hours was overestimated; in contrast, numbers of call and text message related variables were underestimated. Importantly, several associations between actual usage and being addicted to mobile phones could be derived exclusively from the recorded behavior, but not from self-report variables. The study demonstrates the potential benefit to include methods of psychoinformatics in the diagnosis and treatment of problematic mobile phone use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Mounting evidence shows that smartphone usage heavily disrupts our work life and social activities. Moreover, it is possible that overuse could resemble addictive tendencies. A key contributing factor to smartphone overuse seems to be usage of the messaging application WhatsApp. Although WhatsApp is one of the most commonly used communication applications on smartphones, research in this area is scarce. Given the huge societal debate on the impact of smartphone usage on our daily lives, the present study undertook a large-scale investigation in order to provide numbers on smartphone usage generally--and use of WhatsApp in particular, with the aim of providing a basis for a scientific debate. Methods: In a large sample of N = 2,418 users, we recorded WhatsApp behaviour over a 4 week period. Results: Our data show that use of WhatsApp accounted for 19.83% (= 32.11 min) of all smartphone behaviour (compare: Facebook only 9.38% = 15.19 min). The mean of general daily smartphone usage was 161.95 min. Females used WhatsApp for significantly longer periods of time than males and younger age was associated with longer duration of WhatsApp use. While the personality trait Extraversion was positively associated with daily WhatsApp use, Conscientiousness showed an inverse correlation with the length of daily WhatsApp use. Conclusions: The numbers on smartphone usage in the present study show that the smartphone dominates our daily life. In particular WhatsApp is a driving force, here. Given the length of daily smartphone and WhatsApp usage, more studies need to be conducted to better understand smartphone usage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smartphone technology has the potential to facilitate dietary assessment in epidemiological studies. Measurement error might be reduced by real time recording being more feasible with mobile methods. Our aim was to develop NutriDiary, a smartphone app for conducting three-day weighed dietary records. It provides a digital version of the established pen-and-paper method in the Dortmund Nutritional and Anthropometric Longitudinally Designed (DONALD) study, an open cohort study from infancy to adulthood. NutriDiary was developed as a text-based app including brand specific recording of food products. Usability of the beta version of NutriDiary was evaluated in the DONALD study. Participants or their parents were offered to test the app for the annual dietary record and were asked to fill in an app-integrated evaluation questionnaire. Usability was assessed by the System Usability Scale (SUS) and in-app behavior recordings. In the beta version of NutriDiary, a consumed food item is selected using a free-text search from the integrated in-house database LEBTAB. To ease the process of recording, NutriDiary offers some usability features such as a recipe editor, an integrated help mode and a photo function for collecting information on branded food products. In total, 32 mostly female participants (69%) used the app with 21 subjects recording their own dietary intake and 11 subjects conducting a record for their child. However, a relatively large proportion of DONALD participants also refused using the app because they preferred the traditional pen-and-paper method as being easier. Among participants of the feasibility study, subjective usability of NutriDiary was "good" but considerable differences in individual ratings were observed (median SUS = 80, IQR = 23.75, minimum = 45). Although 38% of participants reported technical issues, 88% stated they would use the app again. Technical problems included issues related to setting the time, editing of entered food items and the photo function. In-app behavior recordings showed that the help mode and recipe function were well-used (72% and 63%, respectively). Feedback from the study staff revealed that the post-processing of the dietary data obtained with NutriDiary was still time-consuming. Overall, the beta version of the NutriDiary app was well-received by most participants. Some aspects for improvement such as a barcode scanning function and extension of the database were identified. Moreover, NutriDiary will be further optimized by implementing an automated recipe simulation function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent study has implicated the nucleus accumbens of the ventral striatum in explaining why online-users spend time on the social network platform Facebook. Here, higher activity of the nucleus accumbens was associated with gaining reputation on social media. In the present study, we touched a related research field. We recorded the actual Facebook usage of N = 62 participants on their smartphones over the course of five weeks and correlated summary measures of Facebook use with gray matter volume of the nucleus accumbens. It appeared, that in particular higher daily frequency of checking Facebook on the smartphone was robustly linked with smaller gray matter volumes of the nucleus accumbens. The present study gives additional support for the rewarding aspects of Facebook usage. Moreover, it shows the feasibility to include real life behavior variables in human neuroscientific research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Virtually everybody would agree that life satisfaction is of immense importance in everyday life. Thus, it is not surprising that a considerable amount of research using many different methodological approaches has investigated what the best predictors of life satisfaction are. In the present study, we have focused on several key potential influences on life satisfaction including bottom-up and top-down models, cross-cultural effects, and demographic variables. In four independent (large scale) surveys with sample sizes ranging from N = 488 to 40,297, we examined the associations between life satisfaction and various related variables. Our findings demonstrate that prediction of overall life satisfaction works best when including information about specific life satisfaction variables. From this perspective, satisfaction with leisure showed the highest impact on overall life satisfaction in our European samples. Personality was also robustly associated with life satisfaction, but only when life satisfaction variables were not included in the regression model. These findings could be replicated in all four independent samples, but it was also demonstrated that the relevance of life satisfaction variables changed under the influence of cross-cultural effects., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.